Revelation 3:15

15. Neither cold nor hot The metaphor is taken from water, which, when cold or hot, ( boiling, ζεστος , from ζεω , to boil,) may be palatable, but nauseating when lukewarm. But it is a serious problem, the difficulty of which, is liable to be overlooked. What is that coldness which the Lord prefers to lukewarmness? Luke-warmness itself is that indifference which we commonly call coldness of religious state; and so this cold must be something colder, something implying the absence of even that degree of warmth implied in the equilibrium of indifference. Hence Dusterdieck, followed by Alford, represents it to be a state of actual unregeneracy, of “enmity and opposition” to Christ! And the reason assigned is, that it is easier to convert the enemy than it is to rouse a lukewarm Christian to heat; a reason overwhelmingly contrary to experience. Dusterdieck’s illustration is: “Saul was cold when he persecuted; and when he became Paul he was hot.” So it was easier for Saul to become Paul, than for a lukewarm Christian to become hot! But Paul had a troop of followers as cold as himself, none of whom would warm into conversion, leaving him an exceptional case. But how absurd to make the Lord wish this Church to be as Jewish persecutors, or heathen; like the world around them, rather than a Christian Church, even in its lukewarm phase! On the contrary, Hengstenberg’s view very nearly solves the problem. Not the coldness of the unregenerate, or the apostate, but the coldness of one still a Christian. In this Laodicean coldness there is not only the condition, but the Christian consciousness, of the cold, which is an uncomfortableness, and negatively, at least, feels the need of heat. He is, therefore, dissatisfied, and is more easily disturbed into repentance and zeal, than the man who was at once cold and warm enough to be satisfied and self-determined in his indifference. It is not the coldness, as a fact, but the coldness, as a feeling, which grounds the Lord’s preference. The feeling may be latent, only an unconscious susceptibility; but it is a susceptibility responsive to an awakening appeal.